Oscar-winner Javier Bardem struggles to get work in Spain

He is Spain's best-known actor, but Javier Bardem says he has trouble getting work there.

"I work much less in Spain than I would like to," the Oscar-winning star told AFP.

"I don't get the scripts because people think I live abroad, or that I would be looking for stratospheric money, which is not true," he added.

"If a film has a budget of course I want to be paid, but if not, we can find another way," Bardem said as the Nantes Spanish film festival in western France staged a retrospective of his work.

"I am prepared to be flexible," said the actor, who tends to alternate between Hollywood blockbusters like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" and edgier independent European and American films.

Bardem, who lives with his wife Penelope Cruz and their two children in a suburb of Madrid, has always been deeply engaged in his homeland.

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